Branstad, union clash over blame for use of isolation at juvenile home

Meanwhile, DHS says longtime juvenile home director learned of practice late last year

Aug. 6, 2013

Quiet rooms — or isolation units — are on the lower level of the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo. The rooms are 10-foot by 12-foot concrete-block cells. / Register File Photo

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Gov. Terry Branstad clashed with the state employees’ labor union Monday over who is to blame for the Iowa Juvenile Home’s long-standing practice of placing children in isolation cells for months at a time.

The Des Moines Register reported Sunday that the use of long-term isolation at the state-run home in Toledo dates back to at least 1996, when Branstad was in office and his current Department of Human Services director, Charles Palmer, was in his eighth year of running the agency.

On Monday, DHS said Palmer first became aware of the home’s use of long-term isolation — which violates the department’s own regulations — in late 2012. That was when investigators from the nonprofit advocacy group Disability Rights Iowa visited the home.

The Disability Rights investigators toured the home’s so-called Support Unit in November and found three girls living in three separate, concrete-block isolation cells that measured roughly 10 feet by 12 feet. Two of the girls, one of whom was 13, had been in isolation for two months. A third girl, in her mid-teens, had been in isolation for almost a year.

At a news conference Monday, the governor was asked if he was concerned that for years top DHS officials either were unaware of the home’s use of long-term isolation or had failed to address it.

In response, Branstad said “part of the problem is union work rules” that apply to lower-ranking employees who provide much of the direct care to youths at the home.

He cited the case of Robert McFatridge, a former residential care worker who was twice fired by the home. McFatridge is currently facing criminal charges for allegedly assaulting a child at the home and is seeking reinstatement.

“This is a culture that needs to change,” Branstad said. “I think with the new leadership at the Iowa Juvenile Home, Chuck Palmer is trying to change the culture and make things different. But we do have union work rules and we have a lot of people who work there that are stuck in the old way and want to continue to do things the way they’ve always done things. That’s not acceptable.”

Danny Homan, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the governor can’t blame the home’s front-line workers for the use of long-term isolation.

“We don’t control the work rules,” Homan said. “It’s the employer that establishes the work rules. We have absolutely nothing to do with their use of these isolation rooms.

“That is completely and totally at the discretion of management at the Iowa Juvenile Home — up to and including Mr. Palmer. And as for Mr. Palmer, if he didn’t know about these isolation rooms, he should have known about them.”

On the same day Branstad was criticizing the staff at the Iowa Juvenile Home for being “stuck in the old way” of doing things, DHS was praising the staff at the home. In a written statement on Monday, the department said the Iowa Juvenile Home staff had “done an excellent job” in eliminating the “excessive use” of isolation.

The agency provided the Register with data that show a dramatic reduction in the number of hours youths are spending in “unlocked” isolation cells and rooms at the home.

The newly disclosed data show that in October 2012, shortly before Disability Rights Iowa visited the home, an unspecified number of youths spent a total of 5,202 hours in unlocked isolation. By April, that number had dropped to 4,120 hours. In June, the total number of hours was 776.

DHS did not provide data on the hours spent in locked isolation, but said the vast majority of hours in isolation are in rooms the home considers to be unlocked.

Disability Rights Iowa has previously said doors to isolation rooms were not always locked, but each girl had to remain inside her room, with the door closed at all times, and the steel sash on the door’s window had to remain shut during the day.

The organization has said the youths were effectively locked in, even if the doors were not mechanically locked. That opinion is consistent with rulings in both state and federal court.

When asked whether the state plans to take the initiative and offer assistance to current and former residents of the home who were subjected to long-term isolation, Branstad said Monday that the state should deal with that issue on a case-by-case basis.

“If we have a situation where we feel there is a problem or a child that has not been treated fairly and needs additional counseling or help, we need to try to reach out and help them,” he said. “But each situation is different, and I think we need to recognize the individuality of the circumstances.

“And we also know that these are troubled kids whose life before they ended up in an institution wasn’t good. And they maybe failed in many other institutional settings.”

Although Branstad and Palmer have frequently referred to the “change in leadership” they have implemented at the Iowa Juvenile Home this year, the positions of former superintendent Deb Hanus and former clinical director Ilona Avery have remained vacant for the past five months.

In fact, the lack of a clinical director triggered an inspection last week by the Iowa Department of Public Health, which oversees the home’s substance-abuse treatment program. Public health officials say they were unaware the home was operating without a clinical director until they read about it in the Register.

DHS officials say they’re not required by law to tell the Department of Public Health about staff changes, but will do so in the future.

Since the resignation of Hanus as the Iowa Juvenile Home’s superintendent, Mark Day, the head of the State Training School for Boys in Eldora, has been working part time as the interim superintendent of the Toledo home.

Hanus has said her resignation was voluntary and that she was not asked or encouraged to leave.